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It’s almost time for Shore Poets to take our annual summer holiday, and for all of you to dive into the delights of Edinburgh’s various amazing festivals. But before we go, we have a cracking June line-up for you. We hope you can join us on Sunday 29th June to warmly welcome these three great poets!

Born in Glasgow, Tom Leonard is best known for poetry written in the urban speech of that city. […] He received a Scottish Arts Council Bursary in 1971 and 1978. While Writer in Residence at Renfrewshire Libraries he researched and compiled an anthology of local poets, Radical Renfrew (published in 1990). His poem on the Six O’Clock News (‘Unrelated Incidents 3’) is compulsory reading in the AQA English language GCSE course in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In 2001 he was appointed, with Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, joint Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, from which he retired in 2009. […] Tom Leonard has written plays, sound poetry, political polemic and a biography of the 19th-century Scottish poet James ‘B.V.’ Thomson, Places of the Mind. He is best known for his poems in Glasgow speech, heralded by the epoch-making Six Glasgow Poems of 1969… It could be argued that Leonard has dedicated his life to answering W.S. Graham’s question, ‘What is the language using us for?’

Theresa was born to Spanish-Filipino immigrants in Vancouver, BC and now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her debut pamphlet Close chronicles her move from Canada to Scotland and was launched at StAnza 2012.
Theresa’s poetry has appeared in journals across the Atlantic, including Poetry Review, Canadian Literature, New Writing Scotland, Stand, Under the Radar and many others. She was an Overseas Research Scholar in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow where she wrote the PhD dissertation on the work of none other than Tom Leonard. She has won a British Columbia Arts Council Award and has also been a prize winner in the McClellan Poetry Prize and the Troubadour International Poetry competitions.You can visit Theresa’s website here.

This month’s Shore Poet is Nancy Somerville.

Nancy was born in Glasgow and is now based in Edinburgh. Her work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She edited Goldfish Suppers, an illustrated poetry anthology for families with young children, with Stewart Conn in 2004. Her first collection, Waiting for Zebras, was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2008.You can read more about Nancy at the Scottish Book Trust website.

YOU could read alongside these brilliant folk, in one of our TWO wildcard poet slots. Just bring a poem along, and put your name in the hat at the door!

We’ll also have live music and our famous-for-a-reason lemon cake raffle!